Witchcraft (Pendexter)

NE of the most popular outdoor sports in Europe in the old times was witchcraft. It was brought across the Atlantic and had its vogue in New England. It was ever a popular pastime in darkest Africa. So it is not surprizing that the belief should have been firmly rooted in the new world many generations before the white men came.

The American Indians were firm believers in witches and they were one with the old world, and the transplanted new, in their mode of procedure. To bewitch a person white and red man sought possession of something he had worn, or a lock of his hair, etc. Another Indian method was to make an image of the victim and thrust sharp instruments through it. In this fashion a wizard boasted he could kill by absent treatment.

Alexander Henry, the trader, tells how the Chippewa outlined a figure in sand and then maltreated it. This was as efficacious as to use an effigy. Witchcraft was a dangerous vocation, and the aborigines were quick to resent and punish it.

The most dreaded of all Cherokee witches was the Raven Mocker. The many killings among the Cherokee as a result of their belief in witches, resulted, in 1824, in a law making it murder for the slaying of an alleged witch, and providing a whipping for any one charging another with being a witch. Among the Wyandots witchcraft was punishable by death, either by stabbing, tomahawking, or burning. A grand council of the tribe investigated all such charges. If convicted the defendant could appeal to the fire test, which consisted of running from east to west, and from north to south, through a circular fire. If he emerged from the ordeal uninjured he was innocent.

If a person among the Wyandots grew deaf, or blind, or had earaches and head aches, his affliction, should he have been suspected of sorcery in the past, would be prima facie evidence that he was a witch, and that his evil inclinations had turned and were tormenting him. He was punished.

The Iroquois myths are filled with stories of witches. A man on the Buffalo reservation saw a dog blowing fire from mouth and nostrils and shot it. He followed the bloody trail till two feet took the place of four. The dog was a woman witch. He followed it to the Tonawanda reservation and found the woman dying. A variant of the European were-wolf.

Mary Jamison was bewitched by Andrew John; but witch-doctors succeeded in out-witching the witch, and he died of consumption. Before she was relieved Mary saw a dog that her friends were unable to kill. She was attended by a cat no one else could see.

Another witch on the Tonawanda reservation could turn himself into a hog. Had he lived in these times he would have been a profiteer!